What are your first drafts telling you?

Last week, The New Yorker published a wonderful essay from J. R. Moehringer: "Notes from Prince Harry's Ghostwriter."?

I rarely, if ever, read much about the Royal Family. I haven't read Harry's memoir. And if the essay weren't quoted and recommended by Austin Kleon? in his weekly email, I probably would never have read it. But I'm so, so glad I did.

There are so many wonderful asides in Moehringer's essay, but I'm not going to quote them all here. (Please discover them yourself!) Instead, I want to focus on one point that is completely unrelated to his work with Harry. He writes:

I’ve never taken a ghosting gig for the money. But twice I felt that I had no choice, that the story was too cool, the author just too compelling, and twice the author freaked out at my first draft. Twice I explained that first drafts are always flawed, that error is the mother of truth, but it wasn’t just the errors. It was the confessions, the revelations, the cold-blooded honesty that memoir requires. Everyone says they want to get raw until they see how raw feels.

As a professional writer, I often dread the first time I present a first draft to a new client.

I try to prepare them for disappointment beforehand. "It's going to be rough," I say. I know from experience that writing together is a process. There will be some things they like, and other things that they don't. And honestly, their reaction to the things they don't like is probably more helpful than any amount of praise for what I have written.

Really, though, I'm trying to prepare myself. More often than not, I'm more disappointed than my client by the work that's still required after the first draft. Even though I believe that these errors are, as Moehringer says, "the mother of truth," I secretly hope that, this time, the writing labor will be painfree.

That said, I really want to draw your attention to the final two lines of that passage. I think they're bang on. First drafts aren't scary because they're full of error and rough prose. They're scary because they're raw. They're scary because they give voice to thoughts and feelings that we do our damnedest to silence and hide.

I know this is true of my own writing. It doesn't matter if I'm writing a personal essay or the next chapter of my novel. What flows from my fingertips is often uncomfortable and surprising. "Where did that come from?" I'll wonder as I reach for the delete button before anyone else can see what I let slip out.

But here's the thing: those words, sentences, and paragraphs are usually the ones that we need to hear. And by "hear," I mean "hear" in the biblical sense, as in "he who has ears, let him hear." Those words didn't just come to me unbidden. They came because they're bouncing around my head, begging for my attention. Meanwhile I've been doing my best to silence them with Reply 1988 and a bowl of Tillamook ice cream.

These words rarely make it into my final publications. And that's okay. That's not their purpose. Like the majority of first draft material, they're simply placeholders. Rough pencil sketches that hint at the shapes dancing within my creative vision. Yet if I prematurely quench or ignore them, the rest of the finished product will not come. Because if I'm unwilling to be raw with that first draft, there's no way I'm going to be vulnerable and human in my finished products.

I don't want to impose this reality on any of you readers. However, I know that I'm not the only writer that faces these moments of truth. So, if you dread first drafts like I do, maybe this week's question is for you. Maybe you need to sit down and ask, "What are my first drafts telling me?"

Don't be afraid of the answers. Walking through that discomfort is worth it. The beauty on the other side will be more beautiful than you can currently imagine.